Tuesday, April 5, 2016

In soKukunelits, the current largest chat, there's a group of people that started making a language along their way up the chats. What's amazing is these people aren't traditional conlangers really, just random people who thought it'd be cool to make a language.

It's a pretty basic language at the moment, but there is a pretty comprehensive Google Doc that goes over the basics. Even if it's still in its infancy, the language is fun, and the people are all about having fun with it, which just makes the whole thing great.

The language all and all is pretty similar to English, but it had to be in order to be appealing to the most people. That said, I do think it's different enough to still be fun, especially when you think that it was more or less spontaneously created.

The War of the Great Nations

This
a retelling of the story as I recall it. There was a time before when
rumors of peace existed, and I am only able to tell the story from when I
began hearing it.

It is still an inspiring tale that will be echoed for generations to come in the great hall of the Dwarfs.

Prologue

My first encounter with the Dwarfs, the Fish, and the Wolfs was not
at the inception of the chat. I entered the chat thinking I was on a
mission to grow until I reached chaos.

Indeed, I put the chat in a background tab, only checking back to make sure I had clicked Grow because I couldn't get the Greasemonkey script to work.

In one of those many checks, I noticed that instead of inane and
racist conversations, there was a story of sorts being written. People
weren't quite role-playing, they were just telling a story.

One line at a time.

No direction or structure.

And yet a narrative was emerging.

I decided to add a line or two, thinking it'd be a fun memory on my path to infinite growth. Then it started.

War Drums

On the sixth night of the third moon of the year of the Golden Fish,
war was upon the empire. The Dwarfs had begun beating their war drums in
a march against the madness, the Fish were swarming as they prepared to
strike, and the Wolfs were looking to take advantage of the chaos.

Dom Dom Dom

The drums echoed across the fields, only to be answered by the Gods themselves.

Boom

Thunder from the clouds in the East as the Fish drew nearer.

"Who dares threaten my rein?" The Mad King Trump had awoken. Sitting
on his golden throne, past the Mountaintop and beyond the shore. He
would destroy all the Great Nations before giving up any of his power.
"You think me mad! I'll show you mad!"

As the shouts from the North made their way across the sea and across
the fields, a lone rebellion among the Fish armies finally had enough.
There was one Fish who knew what must be done. One Fish who could do
what the other could not. One Fish who held the fate of the Great
Nations in his fins.

His name was, John Cena.

John Cena rose from his slumber, rising from the sorrow that had
happened just days before. His entire family, all but one son, had been
slaughtered by the ravenous wolfs. It was fate that he should survive.
He swam up and looked upon the lands. The dwarfs were marching to war.
The Wolfs were hungry for more. And The Mad King Trump was ready to die
for his own greed.

"I can do this." John Cena bubbled to himself as he saw how dire the world had become. "I can do this, but I don't want to."

Then it began.

The First Strike

The Dwarfs charged and the Fish surged. The Mad King Trump was
holding his own against the waves of death charging his golden throne.

"You don't stand a chance!" The Trump King shouted from the top of his throne. "Not even the Gods can stump me!"

The Gods must have heard him on that day. A bolt of lightening from
the raging storm in the East shot across the sea and struck down The Mad
King, melting his throne and toppling his crown. He was as good as
dead, but the war was not over.

The Wolfs, not taking sides in this war of Dwarfs and Fish, had used
the confusion as a chance to take to the sea. They were slaughtering
families of Fish, laughing as they did.

The Fish returned to their sea. They had to take out the Wolfs if
they wanted to survive the war. This left the Dwarfs alone in the halls
of The Mad King Trump.

They rejoiced.

The Dwarfs broke out in songs of victory over their foe. The war was
over and they had won. They could now take all the gold that was hidden
in the vast empire. But the Gods still weren't happy.
Some of the nation wanted to stay some of the nation wanted to grow
and plunder more. There were great debates as to how deep they could
dig. There were fears of what could exist in the depths were no Dwarf
dared go.

In the end they went deeper.

The Tendies

"TENDIES!"

Shouts from the West came across the fields. The Dwarfs were not
ready for a new battle. The Fish were busy with the Wolfs. The Gods were
still angry with all the Great Nations. And a new nation was appearing.

"TENDIES!"

Their shrill shrieks chilled the spine as they prepared for their own
war. They would only be satisfied if they could get enough GB Points
a form of currency in their land. The Dwarfs began shouting back,
telling them all that this was not their war. The Tendies cared not for
the politics of a foreign land. They only hungered for more.

Battle lines were quickly drawn as the Dwarfs lined up, preparing for war.

♫ O brothers, o warriors ♫
♫ The axes of our fathers ♫
♫ Fate holds us together ♫
♫ On this eve of war ♫

"GREAT GLORY FOR THE TENDIES!" Their general shouted across the
battlefield, preparing to charge. "YOU WILL NEVER CONQUER US! WE WILL GROW OR WE WILL DIE!"

The Tendies charged out across the plains of the Great Nations. They
spared no one. Dwarf families were killed in ways that made the Wolfs
look gentle. The Tendies were not a people who go quietly into war. They
knew how to win, or at least destroy their enemies.

"I know how to find peace." Whispers from The Old Dwarf upon the
Mountaintop made their way into the ears of all. "We must accept our
fate here. We must stay as many, united in one land."

"THERE IS NO ROOM FOR TENDIES IN YOUR LAND!" Their general did not
accept the words of The Old Dwarf. He had seen what happens to those who
are unwilling.

"Then you will listen to me!" John Cena bubbled as he jumped out of
the water and thrashed about. He was ready to sacrifice his life for the
cause of peace.

There was dissent in the ranks of The Tendies. They were beginning to
see how peace could work for all the Great Nations, including them.

The Council

In lieu of more war, The Council was called into order. All the Great
Nations sent representatives and leaders alike to the Mountaintop to
decide the fate of all their nations. Would they stay or would they grow.

The Council debated for weeks. The Dwarfs and the Fish knew the
dangers of trusting the Tendies, the Wolfs were just looking to take
advantage of the chaos, and the Gods were growing impatient. Among the
council were The Fat One and The Old Dwarf. Their words of wisdom along
with the courage of John Cena helped move along the Council.

The tides were shifting. All the representatives were slowly growing to see the dangers of growth and more importantly, the advantages of peace.

From the ashes of The Mad King arose a Golden Phoenix of Peace. His
prophecy was all but set in stone as the debates waged on. The Tendies
were still not all convinced that they would have a place in the land of
the Great Nations.

However, The Golden Phoenix of Peace calmed their worries. It told them stories of The Tendies as one of the Great Nations.

Even with the tide shifted, not all were convinced of the benefits of staying. There were many battles, and many fallen heroes in the last hours of The Great War, but on the final hour, the Gods spoke out.

"This is your land."

Epilogue

With the thunderous words from the Gods in the East. The Great Nations united under a single flag. The Land of r/miReom50raesawmeo__s was born and all had a home.

Peace was possible as the chaos slowed and homes were built. The
Great War forever a part of the history of our world will remind of us
what horrible terrors our people can do, but also of the peace that is
always waiting.I did not proofread this, and can not account for any inaccuracies in the story. I hope you all enjoy it!

April Fool's has become an internet tradition of sorts. Many popular sites go about making some joke or another. Reddit has been doing it for years, and so when April 1st came around, everyone expected something.

Robin was rolled out without explanation. Many people were immediately reminded of The Button, but news quickly spread that this is not another wait it out meme.

Instead, you are put into a chat room with one other random reddit user. Once in the room you can vote to:

Abandon

Stay

Grow

Abandon makes you leave the chat and start over (not voting does the same). Stay creates a private subreddit with the users involved and ends the voting. Grow merges the chat with another chat of the same tier.

Individual users can Abandon, but a majority is needed to Stay or to Grow.

Creating a private subreddit is an interesting idea, and gives you a place you could interact with some new friends, but in my experience it leads to maybe an hour of interaction before it's completely forgotten. The real fun comes in trying to create the biggest chat.

Tier is just the word the community has come up with to describe the number of merges a chat has gone through. If a chat has merged 3 times, it's tier 3 and it can only merge with another chat that has also merged 3 times.

This leads to long periods of waiting once you've merged a few times, as it takes awhile for a chat to build up to a very large tier. Very long periods of waiting. Like over 24 hours.

There is a self-reported leader board that has emerged, making it easier to try and figure out when the next merge could be, and with which chat you will merge.

Those strange names are generated by Robin and are a random combination of users in the chat. You can see the names evolve with the history of chat names.

History of the current largest chat, KuPrlitsGo.

To help people vote even when they're away, reddit user mvartan created a now very popular userscript, robin-grow, that autovotes whenever you enter a new chat. It also provides useful spam filters and other general filters.

Chats tend to become very spammy as they grow, attracting not just twitch spam, but also a lot of botspam. Using robin-grow makes the chat more normal, or at least more manageable.

robin-grow settings

The current struggle seems to be about when exactly people should vote to Stay. Robin is set to end on April 8th, and what will happen to any currently existing chats on that date is unknown. The chat might be able to continue exist beyond that date, and it seems the majority want to try to push the chat to that limit.

The other thought is that eventually people will just leave, or there will be diminishing returns as time goes on and people stop voting or close the chat.

There may be an optimal place to Stay in order to create a large subreddit, but it's an uphill battle to convince the masses to vote for that shift.

I can say, this is the most fun I've had on a massive scale like this since the madness that was Twitch Plays Pokémon. The dumb debates about what to do and the friendships sparked over such a simple concept. I'll be sad when it's over, but it's been a wild ride.

Thursday, March 24, 2016

Social media has an odd way of bringing things to your attention that you otherwise would have never noticed.

The other day while I waited on a few more segments for Comatose and was trying to figure out exactly what to write for another article today, I stumbled upon something talking about a rather interesting contest.

I went to undergrad at the University of South Florida, and having a chance to drink beer, travel, and support a Tampa based company all at once was a no brainer.

World of Beer is looking for interns this Summer who would travel around the world trying various beers and cataloguing their journey.

They specified needing to film an up to a minute long video where we can introduce ourselves and more or less be interviewed.

The first thoughts I had I immediately dismissed thinking that there would have already been too many people who just wanted to talk about what they like about beer and traveling. I wanted something that was strange enough to make me like it, but also possible for me to film.

I slowly made my way down to the idea of just having me sitting there silently drinking a beer. The question then quickly became can I drink a beer in under a minute?

Yes.

Yes I can.

However, after a few takes, it got harder.
The end result was interesting enough I think, and it taught me something about how YouTube copyright claims work (although that's a story for another post).

Sunday, January 17, 2016

I've been having a lot of fun playing with the time-lapse feature on my gopro. It can make some really fun road trip videos, even condensing a whole vacation into a few minutes.

The week started with me trying out a new time-lapse experiment. I set up my gopro in a window and let it go for three-ish days.

Then the camera moved slightly so I decided to stop it and see how it looked.

I have to get better at framing these shots, I always underestimate just how wide the shot will be. But on top of the poor framing, the video was just... so boring. I condensed it into less than 30 seconds, but the result was still incredibly boring.

I wanted to see if it was the framing that made it so uninteresting so I set the camera outside and let it go for the remainder of the day.

The footage was mildly interesting. Clouds came and went, it rained a bit, the camera fell. But it still felt rather dull.

My thought was that it had to do with the lack of a reference. When there's nothing that we're used to seeing happen at normal speed, it's hard to understand how fast things are. Even in the first video with the sun coming and leaving, it's just hard to appreciate that those are entire days passing when nothing else is in the shot.

So I set the camera to take pictures of my desk. I wanted to see if me working on random things or watching videos and just living added anything to the idea of a multi-day time-lapse. I also made sure that there was always light on so the video never went completely black.

I think it came out better than the previous videos, but I don't know by how much.

The video is interesting, but I think it might still be a little too mundane. I think unless I add some more things, maybe a few days layered on top of each other or something to make it seem more interesting than just a dull day, the idea of a mundane time-lapse might be a bust.

I'll probably try it one more time before giving up the idea, but it's interesting how wrong I was about hidden things being found when the mundane is sped up.